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https://medium.com/p/b948a313b916Tue, 15 Aug 2017 16:01:52 GMT2017-08-15T16:01:52.398ZIt’s the debut of the Rework podcast!

Welcome to the first episode of Rework! This podcast is based on Jason Fried and DHH’s 2010 best-selling business book, which was itself based on years of blogging. So what better way to kick off this show than talking about by-products? In this episode, Jason explains how Basecamp’s ideas have been packaged as blog posts, workshops, and books. We also visit J.H. Keeso & Sons Ltd., a 145-year-old sawmill in Ontario, Canada to see how this family-owned business sells its physical by-products.

We’ll be bringing you new episodes every other Tuesday, so be sure to subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, RadioPublic, or wherever you listen. We’ll take you behind the scenes at Basecamp and bring you stories of other businesses—startups, established companies, makers of physical products, brick-and-mortar stores, and more. Follow along and let us know what you think!

Recently a young actress had an audition for an important role. Problem was, she was up against ‘a far better actress’ competing for the part.

Most of us find ourselves in that position. We want a chance. There’s just someone better.

Back in early 2013 when I was still testing early versions of my writing software, Draft, a user emailed to tell me he lost his writing.

Ugh. My system for auto-saving your writing still had a lot of trouble in non-perfect situations: older browsers, flakey internet connections, computer sleep, etc. He wasn’t happy, but was understanding as I helped rescue what I could.

Today, through a lot of work and code, Draft’s autosave system is (knock on wood) much more bullet proof.

But there have been many similar examples of that situation I was in. I had created writing software. It wasn’t the best writing software. But I was getting people to use it.

How?

I had realized from years of creating businesses that most people work years building mediocre things, sometimes finally building something great, then trying (and often failing) to tell a lot of people about it.

When, they should have started with the end.

In 2011 when I was coming off a failed project at Y Combinator, I vowed to write at least one thing a week, sharing ideas, things I observed, my succcess and more often my mistakes. And my followers grew.

So, when I had early versions of Draft, they were the first people I’d tell, and occasionaly disappoint. But eventually, when Draft was ready for primetime, they were the ones who helped spread the word.

“It was between me and another girl who is a far better actress than I am, far better, but I had the followers, so I got the job.”

A group of followers she gained while we watched her play Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones.

Now, I’m no Sophie Turner. But if it’s so important for even a star like Sophie to build an audience to help propel her career, imagine how important it is for me.

P.S. You should follow me on YouTube: here, where I share more about how we run our business, do product design, market ourselves, and just get through life. Also if you’ve enjoyed this article, pleasehelp it spread by clicking the ❤ below.

Spread the word was originally published in Signal v. Noise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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https://medium.com/p/aeccf3d2d2a2Sat, 12 Aug 2017 00:23:27 GMT2017-08-13T18:25:53.938ZIf there’s only one thing you do as a leader, let it be this.

It’s not what you say that matters — it’s what you do.

I observed the truth of this old adage, firsthand, about six years ago.

At the time, I wasn’t CEO of Know Your Company. I was an employee at another company.

As an employee, I remember making a suggestion to our CEO about how we should market a new program…

I’ll never forget how casually it was brushed aside.

I remember asking our CEO a question via email about a new idea I had, and if it was something he’d be open to…

I’ll never forget that he never responded to my email.

I remember pitching a new approach to thinking about our website to our CEO…

I’ll never forget how defensive he got about why things were the way things were.

The dismissal, inaction, and defensiveness said to me loud and clear:

I don’t want your feedback. I don’t plan to do anything with it.

We often forget as leaders how much our actions say — or don’t say.

Suffice to say, I never spoke up and offered honest feedback after those instances, going forward.

Studies have found that the biggest reason for why people don’t speak up at work is because they believe it is futile. Employees don’t think anything will happen with their feedback… so they don’t give it.

I am living proof of that statistic.

If you want honest feedback, you must act on the feedback you’ve gotten in some way. Prove to employees it’s worth their effort to be honest with you.

“Lead by example” or “Lead from the front” are common sayings we like to read in management books and nod our heads to. But do we internalize and actively practice those sentiments enough?

If you’re wrestling with the questions of how to better retain your employees, how to improve your company culture, how to cultivate more honest feedback from your employees…

Action is the answer.

I wrote this piece as the latest chapter in our Knowledge Center. Each week, we release a new chapter on how to create an open, honest company culture. To get each chapter sent straight to your inbox, sign up below…

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https://medium.com/p/e56e1fb3d9dcThu, 10 Aug 2017 19:17:39 GMT2017-08-10T20:12:49.685ZA fellow I admire just asked me why it’s so easy to be a bad manager. Goddamn, that’s a fantastic question. I made some bonehead moves myself yesterday, so I’m in the perfect position to answer this one.

Because I didn’t want to overthink my answer, I told him I’d write something up this afternoon and send him a link.

Here goes, stream of consciousness, unedited, and quick…

We’re bad at most things by default. The only way to overcome the deficit is with the right kind of practice.

We can practice badly and get over small humps, but if really want to break through from bad to good — or to great — we have to put in deliberate, focused practice. And plenty of reps.

With some things this is straightforward. Want to get better at a sport? There are clearly documented methods and approaches to practice. Want to get better at playing guitar, the drums, or the sax? Same thing.

But with those, even if you practice poorly, a certain number of reps will get you somewhere. And the reps are easy — you can sit down and practice the drums for hours, if you have the time.

But have you tried to manage for hours? How do you even practice management?

Professional athletes keep getting better at the same thing. They start playing a sport at a younger age, and gain expertise and experience in that same sport as they practice over the years. Professional basketball players play the same game at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 — they just play better.

But professional managers don’t start as managers. They’re generally promoted to management. They’ve actually spend most of their lives, and careers, doing something else. So by the time they’ve made manager, they’re beginners again. 3000 days into their career, they’re actually on day one. So, when they start, they’re probably not going to be very good. No different from the first day you pick up a guitar.

Sure, you’ve listened to music for decades. But your first day on guitar sucks. Just like you may have watched people be managed — and you were likely managed yourself. That doesn’t prepare you to pick up the management instrument and strum a beautiful melody. Observation is no substitute for doing.

There are more reasons too, of course. People are wildcards. Humans are emotional — that includes you! And it takes a while to really get to know someone in a way where you can predict their outcomes. Throw something at them, and they’ll react that way. Hand the same thing to them, and they’ll react another. Pick something up together, and there’s yet another reaction.

So people are complex, outcomes are often unpredictable. Over time, with experience, you get better at feeling out outcomes. Your if this then that prediction ratio improves. But the only way to really get that experience is to flub a bunch of shit for a while. Just like how you keep missing the A to G chord change. You have to keep playing, working on your timing, improving your hand strength, etc.

Managerial trials and reps are much harder to come by. And when you practice being a manager, you’re already on stage. Your flubs have consequences. Fucking up could cost you or someone else their job. It could cost a business money, customers, reputation. But when you practice guitar you can sit in your basement, alone. No one cares, and there’s nothing at risk, if your pinky can’t stretch three frets quite yet.

I don’t know… There are a lot of reasons it’s so easy to be a bad manager.

Another reason is that you feel like you have to contribute when there’s really not a lot you should be doing most of the time. Many managers over-involve themselves. Not even micromanage, but are simply around the work being done too often. They get in the way. It’s an easy mistake to make when you’re trying to prove yourself. Especially early on when you’re job title doesn’t really line up with your experience. You’re still just practicing.

And then there’s assumptions. Holy shit, managers — and this absolutely includes me — make too many assumptions about what people know or don’t know. Managers are often privy to information above them that hasn’t yet filtered down below them. But they’ll often assume there’s a symmetry. “Of course they should know that”… Actually, it’s more likely they won’t know that. When you assumed they’d know, you stopped the flow.

Great managers help fill the gaps so no one has to jump over a chasm to come to a conclusion. It takes a while to get good at even seeing the gaps. Then it takes even more time to get good at filling them.

“I had no idea they’d react that way” are the words of an inexperienced manager. Good managers are rarely surprised at how people react. And the only way to eliminate surprise is to have seen it all before. And a honed sense of empathy. That takes living it. Books, classes, and simulations won’t get managers there.

Here’s another assumption: Someone on your team will internalize the news the same way you would. Probably not. Everyone hears the same words differently. Words are always filtered through previous experiences, and everyone’s experiences are different. Good managers recognize this, but it’s a common mistake from new/bad ones.

The hardest thing about business isn’t the business part, it’s the people part. Business is ultimately digital. People are analog. And as teams shift, grow, or downsize, and teams from different departments collide, all sorts of energy can be released. And it’s not always good. Until you’ve seen this happen a bunch of times, and until you’ve had the chance to corral the energy and send it in the right direction, you’re probably going to make a mess of it.

Now some people simply suck as managers, no matter how much they try to get better at it. Management probably isn’t the right job for them. It’s surely not for everyone, but the corporate world puts that target in everyone’s career path. It’s unfortunate that management is the primary way to progress in one’s career. It’s often a regression.

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https://medium.com/p/c0fe0a29d469Thu, 10 Aug 2017 16:51:13 GMT2017-08-10T17:04:24.737ZFor an app that’s been around since 2007, two iterations of its iOS app seems a bit on the light side. We agree. So today we have not just one announcement, but two:

Alas, it doesn’t have everything for everyone yet. Some will notice it doesn’t have Cases or Deals.

But, our second announcement is that this is a whole rewrite of our mobile platform using C# and Microsoft’s Xamarin. This allows us to:

update more frequently

add functionality easily

update it in parallel with our Android app. For those of you using the Android app from January, we have the same features headed your way soon!

So we can get Deals and Cases added a lot easier now. Please stay tuned if that’s something you need. And if you want to hear more about our choice to use C# and Microsoft’s tools in our mobile development, here’s an interview with Michael Dwan our CTO.

Here’s some feedback so far:

Just Right (iankennedy) August 7, 2017 The perfect CRM for a small business with multiple offices. We use Highrise to coordinate several offices and hundreds of clients. The mobile app is great for entering quick notes or adding new contacts on the fly when out in the field. Take [conversation] out of email and put them in Highrise

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https://medium.com/p/6a8fab2c1859Tue, 08 Aug 2017 17:02:44 GMT2017-08-09T17:20:21.544ZReality is a fuzzy picture much of the time

Unless someone is spectacularly inept, there’s always a reasonable sounding explanation for why the project they were involved with fell short. Maybe the direction was unclear, maybe the technology was harder than expected, maybe it was just too ambitious.

It’s sound and human to be sympathetic to such woes, even if you think things should have gone better or faster or made more of an impact. But at some point, you have to decide whether you’re judging someone’s work merely on their earnest effort or whether it’s by the results (or lack thereof).

To me, that’s the dividing line between someone able to lead a team executing a vision, and someone who’s simply on a team working to a plan. I can’t fault someone who’ve done their part well if the whole thing falters, unless their part was the responsibility of the whole thing.

It’s in this executive leap where judgement is rendered as much on all the things you did, as on all the things you didn’t do. If you’re leading the charge, almost everything that happens could have happened differently by the weight of your choices. You have to accept that if you want to play the lead part.

This negative space, the actions not taken, is carried on confidence. Can you maintain that confidence? Can you build it? If not, soon nothing else matters. You can’t be effective without confidence. That’s the whole buck-stops-here premise.

The hardest part is just how fuzzy that evaluation can be. What does it actually mean to “lose confidence”? It’s usually a build up of so many little things, then the final snowflake that bends the leaf of the bamboo.

The problem is that most creative, entrepreneurial work can’t be examined as a closed system. You don’t get to hold all other variables stable while you examine just the one. Which means conclusions can only be drawn from the whole, fuzzy picture.

Being a leader means accepting such uncertainty, and making or accepting the most compelling choice regardless.

I recently spoke with a CEO who told me she received feedback from an employee who proclaimed, “This company doesn’t care about parents.” The employee then proceeded to gripe about the lack of maternity and paternity benefits.

Admittedly, the CEO agreed that the company’s maternity and paternity leave policies could be improved… But she was livid about the broad accusation that “this company doesn’t care about parents.” What an unfair generalization. The CEO was a parent, herself!

The CEO was conflicted about how to react to the feedback: She didn’t want to come off as being defensive to her employee. But she also didn’t want sweeping, inflammatory remarks to be seen as well-received by the employee. How was she supposed to take this feedback? It felt like bullshit.

Bullshit feedback usually comes in one of three forms…

The feedback is true — but the delivery is off.

(This is case of the CEO’s situation I just described). The other person complains and makes it a bitch-session. Or she or he is overly snappy, harsh, and rude.

The feedback is flat-out untrue.

The other person doesn’t have the full picture or was misinformed about something. Or she or he may even be lying.

You can’t tell if the feedback is true or not .

The feedback is vague, unclear or supremely subjective. There aren’t any examples or specifics to back up what she or he is saying.

These three types of bullshit feedback —the poorly delivered, the untrue, and the unclear — are insanely frustrating to be on the receiving end. How in the world are you supposed to possibly receive them well?

Given that how you receive feedback as a leader sets the tone of openness and honesty in your company, this is especially challenging. If you dismiss the feedback too readily or respond negatively to it, you’re likely to discourage that person (and the rest of your team) from ever voicing their honest opinion to you again. But, if the feedback goes completely unchecked, then untrue, rude, or vague feedback could become normalized, accepted behavior in your company.

What should you do?

Here’s exactly how you can receive each type of bullshit feedback well as a leader, and still encourage an open, honest company environment…

If the feedback is flat-out untrue, say this:

“Thank you for letting me know. Can I think on what you shared, and get back to you?”

When we receive feedback that is inaccurate, misinformed (or even a straight-up lie), it’s important to not just blurt out, “I think you’re wrong.” Such a knee-jerk response — even if you are in the right — will come across as defensive to the other person.

Instead, take a little time (be it 30 minutes, or a day or two) to verify that the feedback is indeed false, before letting that other person know. This way, you can first make sure you do have your facts straight, and more calmly point out and share why you think their feedback is untrue.

You may also want to acknowledge your own role in why they may have been misinformed, and how you could have contributed to the issue. Rarely does an employee independently give incorrect feedback (unless they are maliciously lying). Usually, as leaders, we haven’t done our role well enough to shine a light on something — hence their misinformed feedback.

If the feedback is true, but poorly delivered, say this:

“Thank you for sharing what you think and feel. This is helpful for me, and I’m going to think on and act on it right away. Also, not to detract from the merit of what you’re saying — in the future, it may be worth considering that you came across as ____ when delivering your feedback to me.”

When someone blows up at you or goes on a complaining rant, no matter how true the content of what their feedback may be to you — you’ll want to make aware to the other person that their delivery was off. Again, to make sure you don’t come across as defensive, you don’t want to say: “You’re a complainer” or “That was rude.” Instead, use this as an opportunity to coach them. Show you’re not resentful by saying, “not to detract from the merit of what you’re saying,” and be forward-looking by saying “in the future” or “next time.” You want this person to continue to speak up and give you their candid perspective… just not in how they delivered it. Communicate this to them calmly, kindly, and directly.

If you can’t tell whether or not the feedback is true, ask these questions:

“Can you give me an example of what you’re talking about, just so I can better understand and improve for the future?”

“Going forward, what’s the one thing you’d like to see done differently?”

“Was there a specific moment or occurrence that triggered what you’re describing?”

“What would success look like to you in this situation?”

Unclear feedback is perhaps the most frustrating type of feedback to receive because it can feel like a waste of your time to try to unpack. Asking questions is the key to learning and getting to the truth of the feedback. Questions can also serve as guideposts to your employee, encouraging them to give you more clear, specific manner next time.

Handling these three types of untrue, rude, and vague feedback require a bit of patience and self-discipline. Our natural reaction in our inner monologue (for instance, “WTF?!”) must be quelled and placed aside.

How you handle bullshit feedback is a test for you as a leader. Handle it well, and you’ll set an important precedent for your team.

I wrote this piece as the latest chapter in our Knowledge Center. Each week, we release a new chapter on how to create an open, honest company culture. To get each chapter sent straight to your inbox, sign up below…

“We just want someone who can hit the ground running” is the common refrain for companies seeking to only consider senior-level job candidates. This is usually based on the premise that there just isn’t time to hire someone junior because they need on-boarding, training, and mentorship.

That’s all true. You shouldn’t expect a junior hire to immediately perform at the level of your existing company veterans. Everyone instinctively knows and accepts this.

Where instincts clash with reality is when hiring senior-level people. There’s a natural assumption that someone who was already, say, a lead programmer or designer in their past job will be able to step right into that role anywhere. That just isn’t so. Organizations can differ widely. The skills and experience needed to get traction in one place may well be totally different somewhere else.

Let’s take managerial direction, for example. At Basecamp, we’ve designed the organization to rely on managers of one. Especially at the deep end of the seniority spectrum. This means people are often largely responsible for setting their own short-to-medium term direction, and will only get top-level directives.

That can be an uncomfortable and confusing setup when someone is used to having far more hands-on, day-to-day direction on what to work on and when. The more accustomed someone is to that kind of directed form of work, the more there is to unlearn to mesh with how we work at Basecamp. That kind of unlearning can be just as hard as having to pick up entirely new skills, and sometimes even harder.

Getting the traction that someone would expect of a senior-level hire depends as much on general skills as it does on particular organizational compatibility. But because there’s an assumption that senior-level people should be able to just “hit the ground running”, there’s a bigger risk that expectations won’t be fulfilled quickly enough.

The fact is that unless you hire someone straight out of an identical role at an identical company, they’re highly unlikely to be instantly up to speed and able to deliver right away. That doesn’t mean a particular opening might not be best fit for a senior-level person, but it shouldn’t be based on the misconception of immediate results.

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https://medium.com/p/c10ede6ce869Mon, 31 Jul 2017 21:03:37 GMT2017-08-02T16:41:12.848ZWhen I joined the Highrise team in May of 2016, the support team wasn’t a team at all: it was a single person. Chris did everything, from answering emails, to maintaining our help site, to recording how-to videos. Just the emotional output from being “on” empathetically all day every day can be exhausting, so I came along to help.https://medium.com/media/6253e7219b384e5d2f4d597a9951b1b2/href

After a few months of me getting up to speed we realized that while there were certain times that it made sense for both of us to be helping users, like first thing in the morning, for a portion of the day one of us answering emails was sufficient. So we started asking ourselves, what was the best way for us to not only help our users and teammates, but to take care of ourselves as well?

As we started brainstorming the best way to accomplish that, we began by going through all of the other areas of Highrise we wanted to help contribute. The help site and all of it’s written and video content was always our responsibility, but we realized there were other ways we could help with the “extra” bandwidth we found ourselves with.

Chris and I spent some time going through different ways we could divide our time. We settled on a time frame that would help us not only recuperate emotionally from being on, but enough “off” time to really dig into other projects and interests we have.

Any project that you really need to dig in and complete needs more than just a 3 hour chunk of your week.

What did we decide to do? A week on support, and a week off.

The week you are on the support inbox, that is your #1 priority. The expectation we set for users is that we’ll be here from 8am-5pm CST, so when you’re on the inbox, that’s what you cover. There’s still time to sneak other little things in there, but we pride ourselves on giving replying to customers as soon as we possibly can, so when you’re on, you’re on.

When you’re off the inbox, that’s the time to take care of bigger projects. It’s amazing to be able to write and tackle other things without having to constantly go back and check the inbox.

I personally use the time to take care of myself a little bit more too. It’s a great time to catch up on reading and learning, meeting up with users or colleagues to chat over coffee, even just taking a walk in the middle of the day to let the brain relax and think.

This system has worked incredibly well for us. Both Chris and I approach the job refreshed after a week “off”, and can give customers the best version of ourselves, which they wholeheartedly deserve.

We also get to scratch the other professional itches we have, while simultaneously helping our other teammates out as well.

Some may say that their inbox has a perpetual backlog, and they need all hands on deck at all times. Which is understandable, I personally have experienced that on many occasions. But even if your support team is 10+ people, finding room to start on a “small” version of this plan could pay off huge dividends.

If I knew I had every Wednesday afternoon off from the inbox to recharge my empathy batteries and tackle some other passion projects of mine, it completely shifts my mindset, and can very easily stave off burnout.

Will we always work this way? Maybe not. We’re already exploring other options for seasonality, and things may change when a third person joins our team at some point in the future.

You may be hard pressed to find two people who care more about helping users than we do. However, to take care of others, we know we have to take care of ourselves first.

Nearly all product work is done by teams of three people. A team of three is usually composed of two programmers and one designer. And if it’s not three, it’s two or one — not four or five. We don’t throw more people at problems, we chisel problems down until they can be tackled by three people, at most.

We rarely have meetings at Basecamp, but when we do, you’ll hardly ever find more than three people around a table. Same with conference calls or video chats. Any conversation with more than three people is typically a conversation with too many people.

What if there are five departments involved in a project or a decision? There aren’t. Too many dependencies. We don’t work on projects like that — intentionally.

What is it with three? Three is a wedge, and that’s why it works. Three has a sharp point. It’s an odd number so there are no ties. It’s powerful enough to make a dent, but also weak enough to not break what isn’t broken. Big teams make things worse all the time by applying too much force to things that only need to be lightly finessed.

The problem with four is that you almost always need to add a fifth to manage. The problem with five is that it’s two too many. And six, seven, or eight on a team will inevitably make simple things more complicated than they need to be. Just like work expands to fill the time available, work expands to fill the team available. Small, short projects become bigger, longer projects simply because all those people need something to do.

You can do big things with small teams, but it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to do small things with big teams. That’s a disadvantage of big teams! Small things are often all that’s necessary. The occasional big thing is great, but most improvements come as small incremental steps. Big teams can step right over those small moves.

Three keeps you honest. It tempers your ambition in all the right ways. It requires you to make tradeoffs, rather than keep adding things in. And most importantly, three reduces miscommunication and improves coordination. Three people can talk directly with one another without introducing hearsay. And it’s a heck of a lot easier to coordinate three people’s schedules than four or more.

We love three.

Three’s company was originally published in Signal v. Noise on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.